Social Isolation Project: Old Speaker Repair

Thirty-one years ago Linda and I were finally both working in our careers of choice and with that came slightly more prosperous days. Like many young families starting out, we invested in the one thing everyone needed in their home, a set of bitchin stereo speakers!

Back then I researched the different loudspeakers available on the market: Klipsch, Bose, Advent, Dahlquist, SpeakerLab, and Acoustic Research (ARs). I spent hours listening to these models over at Huppin’s in Spokane or anywhere hi-fi sound was produced.

I would sit down and have the salesman play cuts from three albums that I carried with me during my search. Aja by Steely Dan, Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, and Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd were my go-to vinyl. I know, my selections fell in the middle of the road when it came to audiophile listening. I chose the cuts because I believed they covered the range of listening my vinyl collection demonstrated.

After hours of intense listening and making a true assessment of my financial status, I chose a set of Acoustic Research AR TSW 610 speaker towers built between 1987-89. They had a sound I liked and their price came in on the high end of affordable. I felt they were beautiful towers with a sound that was close to perfect.

Each speaker has a 12″ woofer, 6.5″ midrange and. 75 Titanium dome tweeter. They could take up to 175 watts of power and the sound they produced could make your ears hurt. (I never listened at that volume, LOL.) My love affair for those speakers began.

Fast forward to about three years ago when I was watching TV. We were running our home entertainment system through my Denon amp and using my ARs for the sound. (I know, how fast love fades! My precious speakers have become a TV sound system.)

All of a sudden my amp shut down! I thought my amp was going bad so I traded the Denon amp for a Pioneer amp that I had collected as a media center back up.  Within fifteen minutes the Pioneer shut down and gave me an error message that pointed to a short in my speakers.  I quickly traded out the ARs and hooked up some old shelf speakers I used in my garage. They worked fine and are still working!

This pandemic we are suffering through has given us one interesting by-product. Time at home, separated from other distractions. Linda and I have cleaned our house, cleaned up our yard, and started several projects that have been procrastinated for years. My AR speaker repair was one project that I put off and felt that maybe I would never complete.

I talked to my brother about the short in the speaker towers and I took a closer look at the speakers and found that the foam rubber gaskets on all four of the speakers had deteriorated and ripped/flaked apart.

Doing an internet search I found that replacing the foam was standard practice and I was able to order a kit to make the repairs. I placed the order and then went back to the internet and found YouTube videos showing exactly what the repair process was all about. This all looked like something I could do given my free time in self-quarantine.

I removed all four speakers and started the scraping and cleaning needed to prepare them for the replacement of the new foam. While the speakers were removed, my brother Dale came out and looked over the power boards inside the speaker boxes. He tested everything and drew up a schematic of these boards inside.  At this time we haven’t discovered a short, but we are still working on assessing if we need to update the electronics.